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The Incredible Shrinking Postal Service

How often do you actually go to the post office? Once a week? Once a month? Never,
except on Tax Day?

If you are among the millions of last-minute tax-filers, then it doesn't matter
how infrequently you make it to the nearest post office. Odds are you popped in
Tuesday — which is exactly why concerned, off-duty postal workers were on
hand at many offices to warn taxpayers of pending postal cutbacks.

Members of the American Postal Workers Union and the National Mail Handlers Union
oppose U.S. Postal Service plans to reduce the size of the workforce, eliminate
Saturday delivery and set up a stand-alone USPS-only health insurance plan outside
of the government-wide Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.

The two unions decided that Tuesday was the best day to hand out leaflets to
frantic customers, because it was the deadline for getting postmarks on your 2011
tax returns. April 15 — the regular deadline — fell on Sunday and
taxpayers got another day to do their taxes because April 16 was a special holiday
(Emancipation Day) here in the District of Columbia.

Timing, the unions figured, is everything. And maybe they are right.

Also on Tuesday, the Senate voted to debate the comprehensive and controversial
USPS plan to save the federal mail service, which is losing money big-time. It's
the victim of private competition (UPS, FedEx, DHL), which promises to move faster
and more reliably (for a price) while leaving the Postal Service to take a letter
from Miami to Anchorage for 44 cents. The Postal Service is also losing money
because of email and texting, which, for many people, have eliminated the need to
send letters.

The so-called 21st Century Postal Service Act — proposed by Sens. Susan
Collins (R-Maine), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Thomas Carper (D-Del.)
and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) — is about as fed-friendly a quorum as
you can find in the Senate.

The bill would allow the Postal Service to offer buyouts to up to 100,000
employees but requires that half of the 200 offices and facilities the USPS wants
to close to remain open, although they may be moved to and operated inside large
commercial box stores, like Wal-Mart.

Postal watcher Sean Reilly of the Federal Times, outlined the postal reform
plan yesterday on our Your Turn radio show. Federal Times Editor Steve
Watkins and Washington attorney Bill Bransford discussed the ever-
changing "scandal" at the General Services Administration. If you missed the show,
want to hear it again or pass it on to a friend it is archived on our home page.
You can listen anytime by clicking here.

This is for all the true geeks out there. An Australian "scent solutions" company
has created a fragrance designed to smell like a MacBook, CNET reports. The company says the
perfume "encompasses the smell of the plastic wrap covering the box, printed ink
on the cardboard, the smell of paper and plastic components within the box and of
course the aluminum laptop which has come straight from the factory where it was
assembled in China."

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